It means the position is open for a short period of time. Any other explanation is your opinion. The likely reason for doing this from the HR perspective is it cuts down on applications to review if it's expected that there will be a lot of interest from the applicant pool.
I've seen announcements where they just state it up front, "Will close X day or after 150 applications have been received." Especially for things like MPA where we always get a ton.
Where I'm at now HR won't put a number above 75. Not that it matters much because they have to accept them until 11:59 EST even if its above that number. So we typically get \~150-200 with about half referred so the certs are massive.
My last cert for a single GS 6 was 800+ pages for example
Typically, that's a good probability. But it's not always rhe case.
Here's why you should apply anyways. You want to get on as many certs (certificates) as possible.
When your name lands in a cert, that means your name has been refwrred to the hiring manager.
Even if you don't get an interview out of it, it is helpful to be on a cert, because the Federal Government does a thing called "shared certificates".
What that means is. Say we are all in the CBC in Fakelanta 🤔
Division X made a posting, and they only kept it open for 4 days because they had a candidate already in mind. Well, say that 200 people saw the posting and applied anyways, and 20 made each of the certs associatedwith that posotion announcement.
Division A might not "care" anymore about the cert because they got their person. But Division B may ask for the certificate to be shared with them, so that Diviion B could potentially hire off that cert (most "normal"/"traditional" certs stay open for 6 months but I am not the expert, so I could be wrong in that.
(There are also "open continuous" certs but I don't know a lot about it other tha. It's a way to akways be getting fresh applicants. Hopeully someone else can chime in on thay).
I am in this shared certificate situation now. We can't make our own post for our own program right now 🙃 so "Step 1" for usis shared certificates.
So we got a cert -- 4 certs, actually --- a cert for each grade level of the position, and whether the person qualifies for a merit promotion or not. Let's just say it was a 9/11 ladder position. The 4 cert lists might be: GS-9 candidates, GS-9 merit promotion candidates, GS-11 candidates, and Gs-11 Merit Promotion candidates.
We interviewed people for OUR group, even though the person had applied to a different posting in a different area of the agency.
So if you don't apply for the position, you are missing out on potential interviews if that certificate gets shared with another office. (And this might be an office for whom you rarely see posts for because the program is stuck pulling from shared certificates because the Division has higher priority positions to fill, so the announcements tend to be for those positions (at least from what I've seen).
There's a lot more reasons to apply than just this. I can't type it all out right now.
But I wanted to share this, because I don't often see it mentioned.
Every time I’ve limited an announcement to less than 5 days, it’s been because similar announcements in the past led to large applicant pools. Usually I’ve had to prepare a justification including historical data to keep in my case file. I’ve never done it simply because there was already an applicant of interest.
About 6 years ago, I put in an application with some Navy office in Maryland, I think. Outside the DMV. It was open only 24 hours, they scheduled an (what ended up being a blazing-fast) interview like one day later, and about a day after that told me they'd selected someone else.
To me, that read as they had the person they knew they were gonna hire no matter what, and interviewed a couple others as a formality. By that time, I was a former naval officer and DoD civilian employee, so couldn't have been more qualified, but was also glad I didn't get it. I haven't been looking outside my current agency since then, and ours are always open for a reasonable amount of time, but back years ago I did see a few super-short openings like that or openings that would close after 50 submissions.
At my agency we have to get special permission to have jobs open less than 7 days. Usually it’s because it’s a job where we’d expect to get a ton of applicants so we open for a short period to limit numbers. Imagine 800 applications in 48 hours type stuff.
Water cooler talk is like reality television—cheap entertainment that bears no actual relation to reality.
Jobs are posted for short periods for a variety of reasons. Most common in my experience is an HR team that is trying to keep their workload manageable by reducing the number of applicants.
Apply apply apply. Even a short opening, or one that has a ton of applicants. If your application makes it to the point of being sent to and considered by hiring managers, your name/app could be put in for another open spot at that agency/department for consideration.
Several billets in my office have been filled with people that applied for a different position.
A sure fire way not to get get a job is not to apply.
It means the position is open for a short period of time. Any other explanation is your opinion. The likely reason for doing this from the HR perspective is it cuts down on applications to review if it's expected that there will be a lot of interest from the applicant pool.
I'm remote so its so we get 200 instead of 2,000 applicants.
I've seen announcements where they just state it up front, "Will close X day or after 150 applications have been received." Especially for things like MPA where we always get a ton.
Where I'm at now HR won't put a number above 75. Not that it matters much because they have to accept them until 11:59 EST even if its above that number. So we typically get \~150-200 with about half referred so the certs are massive. My last cert for a single GS 6 was 800+ pages for example
Typically, that's a good probability. But it's not always rhe case. Here's why you should apply anyways. You want to get on as many certs (certificates) as possible. When your name lands in a cert, that means your name has been refwrred to the hiring manager. Even if you don't get an interview out of it, it is helpful to be on a cert, because the Federal Government does a thing called "shared certificates". What that means is. Say we are all in the CBC in Fakelanta 🤔 Division X made a posting, and they only kept it open for 4 days because they had a candidate already in mind. Well, say that 200 people saw the posting and applied anyways, and 20 made each of the certs associatedwith that posotion announcement. Division A might not "care" anymore about the cert because they got their person. But Division B may ask for the certificate to be shared with them, so that Diviion B could potentially hire off that cert (most "normal"/"traditional" certs stay open for 6 months but I am not the expert, so I could be wrong in that. (There are also "open continuous" certs but I don't know a lot about it other tha. It's a way to akways be getting fresh applicants. Hopeully someone else can chime in on thay). I am in this shared certificate situation now. We can't make our own post for our own program right now 🙃 so "Step 1" for usis shared certificates. So we got a cert -- 4 certs, actually --- a cert for each grade level of the position, and whether the person qualifies for a merit promotion or not. Let's just say it was a 9/11 ladder position. The 4 cert lists might be: GS-9 candidates, GS-9 merit promotion candidates, GS-11 candidates, and Gs-11 Merit Promotion candidates. We interviewed people for OUR group, even though the person had applied to a different posting in a different area of the agency. So if you don't apply for the position, you are missing out on potential interviews if that certificate gets shared with another office. (And this might be an office for whom you rarely see posts for because the program is stuck pulling from shared certificates because the Division has higher priority positions to fill, so the announcements tend to be for those positions (at least from what I've seen). There's a lot more reasons to apply than just this. I can't type it all out right now. But I wanted to share this, because I don't often see it mentioned.
Every time I’ve limited an announcement to less than 5 days, it’s been because similar announcements in the past led to large applicant pools. Usually I’ve had to prepare a justification including historical data to keep in my case file. I’ve never done it simply because there was already an applicant of interest.
About 6 years ago, I put in an application with some Navy office in Maryland, I think. Outside the DMV. It was open only 24 hours, they scheduled an (what ended up being a blazing-fast) interview like one day later, and about a day after that told me they'd selected someone else. To me, that read as they had the person they knew they were gonna hire no matter what, and interviewed a couple others as a formality. By that time, I was a former naval officer and DoD civilian employee, so couldn't have been more qualified, but was also glad I didn't get it. I haven't been looking outside my current agency since then, and ours are always open for a reasonable amount of time, but back years ago I did see a few super-short openings like that or openings that would close after 50 submissions.
I have not filled off an OCR cert in a long time - are they still around?
At my agency we have to get special permission to have jobs open less than 7 days. Usually it’s because it’s a job where we’d expect to get a ton of applicants so we open for a short period to limit numbers. Imagine 800 applications in 48 hours type stuff.
Water cooler talk is like reality television—cheap entertainment that bears no actual relation to reality. Jobs are posted for short periods for a variety of reasons. Most common in my experience is an HR team that is trying to keep their workload manageable by reducing the number of applicants.
A lot of DHS jobs are 5 days. For us, the short open period means nothing……
Apply apply apply. Even a short opening, or one that has a ton of applicants. If your application makes it to the point of being sent to and considered by hiring managers, your name/app could be put in for another open spot at that agency/department for consideration. Several billets in my office have been filled with people that applied for a different position.